Free Republic

Under its new ownership, Giphy will live on as part of the Instagram team, with the goal of making it even easier to send GIFs and stickers in Instagram stories and direct messages. For now, though, Facebook says that things will remain the same for Giphy users. ... Numerous services rely on Giphy’s API for supplying GIFs, including Twitter, Pinterest, Slack, Reddit, and more. While Facebook’s announcement would seem to indicate that those services will still be able to rely on Giphy as they currently do — at least for now — there may be some added tension with those...

Here's another amazing "fact check" brought to you by AP & Facebook: CLAIM: Individuals in Washington state who refuse to cooperate with contact tracers, or those who refuse testing, will not be allowed to leave their homes for necessities. AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The Department of Health in Washington state confirmed to the AP that contact tracing participation is voluntary. - - - - - - - - - - - - My assessment of AP's assessment: Here is a link to an article with the news conference video: https://lynnwoodtimes.com/2020/05/12/governor-inslee-lays-out-statewide-contact-tracing-plan-for-covid-19/ In it, a reporter asks: “When it comes to contact tracing,...

https://twitter.com/VincentCrypt46/status/1261122553461923840 2 MIN VIDEO FROM THE iNGRAHAM ANGLE DR SAYS PEOPLE FEEL BETTER WITHIN 5 HOURS OF TAKING THE TRUMP COCKTAIL

A bipartisan amendment that would have prohibited law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, from obtaining the web browsing and internet search histories of Americans without a warrant failed to pass in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday by a single vote. Twenty-seven Republicans and 10 Democrats voted against the amendment to H.R. 6172, which will reauthorize lapsed surveillance powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The amendment offered up by Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and Sen. Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, would have forced the government to get a warrant before obtaining the internet search history of...

On April 1, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emailed Nevada public health counterparts for lab reports on two travelers who had tested positive for the coronavirus. She asked Nevada to send those records via a secure network or a “password protected encrypted file” to protect the travelers’ privacy. The Nevada response: Can we just fax them over? You’d hardly know the U.S. invented the internet by the way its public health workers are collecting vital pandemic data. While health-care industry record-keeping is now mostly electronic, cash-strapped state and local health departments still rely heavily on...

Geoff Keighley teased today's announcement as "one of the more important moments this summer," and he wasn't kidding. Epic Games gave us our first glimpse at Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) working its magic. The following footage showcases some technical demos running in real-time on PlayStation 5 (PS5) Since the Xbox Series X is around 2-3 teraflops more powerful than the PS5, we can probably expect better effects on Microsoft's machine. The demo is meant to demonstrate two core features of UE5 known as Lumen and Nanite. Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and...

The new General Accountability Office (GAO) has a very un-sexy title-- one that might make you skip paying any attention to it altogether: "EXPORT CONTROLS: State and Commerce Should Improve Guidance and Outreach to Address University-Specific Compliance Issues." But it's actually on a topic of grave importance to national security and protection of U.S. intellectual property: attempts by foreign countries to spy on and steal U.S. research from America's universities and colleges. [T]here is a risk that some foreign students and scholars will transfer or “export” sensitive information they gain through their research in the United States back to their...

Neil Ferguson, a mathematical epidemiologist at Imperial College London, panicked policy makers around the world when he released his computer model projecting that the coronavirus pandemic would result in 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and 2.2 million in the U.S. It is hard to understand why his pronouncement was accepted so uncritically when he has a history of being wrong. Very wrong. According to The Spectator, in 2005, Ferguson said that up to 200 million people could be killed from bird flu. The actual number was several hundred. In 2009, he gave an estimate of 65,000 deaths from the Swine...

Hackers have attacked the Web site of top showbiz attorney Allen Grubman, demanding $21 million while threatening to reveal personal details of his clients including Elton John, Lady Gaga and Barbra Streisand. Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks’ site is down, and the hackers claim to have 756 gigabytes of data including contracts and personal e-mails. A screenshot alleged to be a contract for Madonna has already been released. Multiple sources tell Page Six that the FBI is investigating, while the NYC-based law firm says it has notified its famous clients.

The top lawyer for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign told House Intelligence Committee investigators that he was aware of Fusion GPS's plans to have British ex-spy Christopher Steele brief reporters about his controversial anti-Trump research during the 2016 contest. The December 2017 testimony of Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign's general counsel, was revealed through the release of dozens of Russia investigation witness interviews last week. Elias, the head of the Perkins Coie political law group, hired Fusion on behalf of the campaign. Then-Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina asked whether Elias knew that Fusion sent Steele to talk to media outlets...

Thunderbolt vulnerabilities can let attacker with physical access steal data from memory and encrypted drives. A Dutch researcher has detailed nine attack scenarios that work against all computers with Thunderbolt shipped since 2011 and which allow an attacker with physical access to quickly steal data from encrypted drives and memory. Researcher Björn Ruytenberg detailed the so-called Thunderspy attacks in a report published on Sunday, warning that the attacks work even when users follow security best practice, such as locking an unattended computer, setting up Secure Boot, using strong BIOS and operating system account passwords, and enabling full disk encryption. Microsoft...

Twitter is warning users impersonating unsupported browsers to enable the original site theme that the legacy version will be shut down on June 1st, 2020. In July 2019, Twitter began rolling out a new site interface that many, including myself, was greatly inferior to the legacy template. It was quickly discovered that if you installed a browser extension to trick Twitter into thinking you were running Internet Explorer 11, which is unsupported, Twitter would continue to show you the older site template. For those who are using this trick to impersonate Internet Explorer 11, Twitter has started to display a...

It might seem like the glorious era of remote work is upon us, driven by a pandemic push. Zoom! Slack! Who needs the office? The promise of uncompromised productivity paired with freedom is alluring. I’m a behavioral scientist, though, so color me skeptical. While software can ostensibly replicate the features of an office, there are some underlying behavioral tricks that physical offices have mastered. We may not want to discard them so quickly. Let’s start in a not-so-obvious place: habits. People often complain that they can’t start new habits. “I have tried but I just can’t seem to [INSERT: exercise,...

Documents and images shared by users outside China on WeChat, the country’s most popular social media platform, are being monitored and cataloged for use in political censorship in China, a new report says. Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto online watchdog, says in Thursday’s report that WeChat users outside of China are thus unwittingly contributing to censorship. Content they share that censors deem inappropriate is thus barred from being seen by users inside China. Tencent is a major investor in Cary-based Epic Games, which is publisher of the globally popular Fortnite. Documents and images transmitted entirely among non-China-registered accounts undergo...

I bought a new ecotank 2027 and I love it, but when I want to print out from my pictures (f'rinstance), or anything direct from the computer (desktop), there's a que of over 50 pages that come out blank before actually printing.

Before the pandemic, the plan would have seemed like something ripped from a distant dystopian future in which the human race fully surrenders to Big Tech. On the April 10 online document, the logos of Google and Apple sat atop a description of the companies' joint plan to enable America's cellphones to keep track of everyone with whom their owners come into contact. Who would sign on to such extensive surveillance? Much of the world already has. In South Korea, health officials use apps and video cameras to track down people who came into contact with COVID-19 patients before symptoms...

“They introduce me? Am I on?” Thus began Joe Biden’s speech during a glitchy, stilted “virtual town hall” set in Tampa, Florida so plagued by technical problems that made the former vice president’s event look like it was run by local seniors attempting Zoom for the first time. The YouTube event began with a series of Florida politicians attempting to introduce Biden - when their livestreams worked. Florida Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo’s speech was marred by lag and audio glitches. Rep. Charlie Crist’s (D-Fla.) video abruptly cut out as he was speaking. For a long stretch between speakers, the...

MEDINA, WA—The effort to find a vaccine for the coronavirus reached a milestone today after philanthropist Bill Gates unveiled his brand new “Coronavirus Cure v 2.1.13” to the world. It’s now being tested on human beings for the very first time. The first test subject, Ryan Flenderson, is now protected from the coronavirus for all eternity thanks to science and the philanthropic genius Bill Gates. There is one small side-effect being reported—though experts insist it’s nothing to be concerned about. Within a few hours of receiving the new vaccine from Bill Gates, Ryan began loudly singing the praises of Microsoft’s...

It’s really sickening to think that the folks weaponizing a natural disaster’s death toll to bash conservative policies are also seeking to make abortion as accessible as making a phone call or ordering medication online. The New York Times reported on the growing prevalence of from-home, do-it-yourself abortions during the coronavirus pandemic. As some abortion clinics have been ruled “non-essential” businesses by state governments in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, etc. -- lamentable for lefties who also say that conservatives aren’t doing enough to save virus victims -- the outlet reassured desperate moms that “TelAbortion” is a popular new option. NYT explained...

Have you noticed that a lot of lefties are more or less admitting they don’t want the nation to recover from the Chinavirus lockdowns? Not just AOC with her bubblegum wrapper economics degree celebrating the oil industry’s free fall; there are celebrity climate change cultists who care more about trees than humans and race pimps who maintain that those demanding to get back to work don’t care about “black and brown people.” The left is getting bolder about rooting against the nation. Take Teen Vogue (please!) for example. It has a series of articles called “Bread and Roses,” which explores...